Hydraulic APCs typically are classified as either “suction-side” or “pressure-side” depending on whether their associated water hoses communicate with inlets (the “suction side”) or outlets (the “pressure side”) of water-circulation pumps. Suction-side APCs conventionally lack any on-board debris filtration. Instead, debris ingested by a suction-side APC is passed through the cleaner and its associated hose to a filter remote from the cleaner.
By contrast, pressure-side APCs often include on-board debris filtration. Such an on-board filter typically is a mesh bag attached at a mouth to a head of an APC. The mesh bag is elongated vertically and attaches to, and protrudes upward from, a top of the cleaner body. Particularly when the bag contains a substantial amount of debris, its positioning atop the body can lead to significant hydraulic drag impeding movement of the APC within a pool. This may be true as well for non-porous filters protruding upward from tops of cleaner bodies.
These drag issues, together with limitations on mouth sizes, restrict the sizes and overall volumetric capacities of conventional on-board filters for pressure-side APCs. Designing these types of filters to match design lines of APC bodies additionally may be difficult, as may be selecting a single mesh size satisfactory to capture fine debris yet not clog unduly. Moreover, because the mesh itself conventionally is opaque, users of these existing filters cannot always view debris captured by the filters so as to know when to empty them.